Thursday, January 26, 2012

Hi All,
If you live in the LA area and have a burning desire to shake my hand and perhaps watch me draw on something than I recommend hustling down to the world famous Comic Bug on Feb 01 from 11-8. All info is here: Signing Facebook page

Thursday, January 19, 2012

...and when you are ready to give me your hard earned money and prove that SOPA isn't neccessary then click here to get your very own digital copy of Me2 with all kinds of cool moving panels and the like. It will cost less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks and twice as entertaining.Buy the Me2 Digital Issue

Arizona
was very good but not over the top great for me. I did better than
expected so I was happy with the show and will definitely be back.

Side Note: this show is strange because the artist alley people out number
the retailers 2-1. I think people come to the show with x amount of
money to spend and they end up spending in artist alley because there
isn't as much traditional retail to spend it on.

Prints:
I had given up on creating prints a few years ago because I thought
they had fallen so out of fashion that it didn't seem worth my time
doing them. Boy was I wrong. Prints in general have been a boon for me
over the last couple of years. The time to cost to price of prints is
what makes them attractive. They are easy to make and very profitable. I
had a new break out print (Uzimami) which is brand new. The standards
keep selling. Pirate Queen, Zatanna. I feel like I did a better job of
displaying my prints this time out and it really helped sell them. I
clipped them to my banner and put them front and center on my table. I
took a page out of the kids at the Anime shows and went for broke in
displaying what I am selling.

Side Note: If you
take the time to go to one of these shows you might as well go all out. I
admit his was something I had to get my head around. I had done so many
conventions that they had lost their charm for me. I always like
meeting the people who follow my work but I wasn't taking the shows
seriously. Over the last two years I've improved and revised what I'm
taking to the shows to give the fans more of what they want and to make
available products I think will be most profitable. It's definitely
influenced my bottom line.

Original Art: Original art is a strange
beast. It's not a casual buy for a few reasons. It's usually pretty
expensive and it's an item someone has to really want. It's tough to
calculate or prepare for what is going to sell. For example, I've sold a
ton of sketches and prelims lately. It could be the fact that they are
lower priced but in most cases the buyer purchases multiple prelims at a
time. This tells me that they are more interested in collecting this
type of art vs. getting something for cheap.

At this show
there seemed to be a lot of interest in OG art from the series Deity. I
toured a lot in this area during that era so it's no wonder the fans
who know me are familiar and searching for that art. Unfortunately most
of the key pieces from Deity are gone. That being said I sold a couple
misc. pieces mostly pin up style art which helped push the show into the
very good status.

I was asked multiple times if I was planning to create an art
book or do another sketchbook. I'm listening and I've been putting one
together.

Comics: At least in this region I'm still
playing to fans of my older work. Which is great because the longer you
make comics the more you appreciate the fans and how much they support
what you do. Since I don't do a monthly comic that can be easily found
in a comic store it's no wonder that most fans are shocked that I have
new comics to sell. My impression is that they think ECB is a little
too off what they expect from me. ECB for the most part is an
experimental piece. I've really enjoyed doing it but I understand it's a
polarizing piece of work for my fan base. The ones that love it really
love it. The ones that don't keep asking for a new Deity series. Those
fans I push towards Me2. Digital comics are still not on the radar at
comic shows. It's still very much a paper and print market so talking
about digital comics to them is like talking about flying cars and jet
packs. Sure it sounds cool but isn't that something that's going to
happen in 10-20 years? Digital comics conceptually play better in the
internet space but that has not stopped me from promoting what I
honestly believe is on a daily basis becoming the present of comics.

Takeaways:

Get more organized with my original art. I sort of throw stuff into a portfolio and bring it with me.

More promo material.

Print a new sketch/art book.

Square for my I-Phone was huge. I ran credit cards sales for all three of us. Opens up the ceiling on the convention $.

Links

About Me

I got my start in the Comic Book industry working for Marvel, DC and
Image Comics. I started my own publishing company Hyperwerks where I
published comics for almost 8 years. I've spent the last few years in
the toy industry. I am now developing toy inventions and intellectual
properties for toy companies, Comic Books, TV, Movies and beyond.